Lickable Taste Gadget
Homei Miyashita from the Miyashita Lab at Meiji University in Japan has created the Norimaki Synthesizer, a lickable taste gadget or electronic flavor saver. The device is a part of the broader study of humancentered computing or humancomputer interaction (HCI). The novel taste display uses ion electrophoresis. It has five gels that contain electrolytes that supply controlled amounts of five basic tastes: magnesium chloride is bitter, citric acid is acidic, glutamic sodium is umami gel, sodium chloride is salty, and glycine is sweet. The device applies different tastes to the user s tongue that roughly correlate to colored lights, sort of in a way that Jolly Rancher colors represent natural When applied to the tongue without voltage, the user tastes all five flavors. When an electric potential is applied, the cations in the gel move to the cathode side and away from the tongue, so that the flavor is suppressed. The taste display can reproduce arbitrary tastes by individually suppressing
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